


our antebellum innocence

by goldtreesilvertree



Series: something enchanting, something deadly (wolf 359 fantasy au) [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Family, Gen, Growing Up Together, Lottie can in fact write fic on her own (who knew?), Platonic Relationships, Spoilers for Chapter 17 of SESD, The SESD Prequel nobody asked for, We're so far from canon you can't even see it from here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 06:16:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12006804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtreesilvertree/pseuds/goldtreesilvertree
Summary: When she’s seven and he’s six, she can already read half the palace library, and he cares more for games than for books. (This will change later. Everything will change later.)“Minkowski, you’re being boring. Come outside and play, you’ve forgotten what sunlight looks like!”“Go away, Eiffel, I’m reading!”





	our antebellum innocence

**Author's Note:**

> So, Minkowski and Eiffel have one of the most important relationships in SESD, but they only get to share one scene. To make up for that, here's a little coda for my favourite royals. Spoilers for the end of SESD. I guess you could read this on it's own, but I don't know why you'd want to. Anyway, I love these two, so if you'd like more fluffy codas to this beautiful monster AU, let me know what you think of this one.

Neither of them remember their first meeting, assuming the other has always been an ( _ irritating, bossy, comforting, protective _ ) ever-present constant at their side. They don’t recall how their parents worried that Renée, as an only child, as a  _ princess,  _ might not take well to her new little cousin, who couldn’t (would never) match her for speed or strength, who was still crawling when she could already run. They don’t remember that she waited for him, helped him to his feet when he fell, fussed over him when he was hurt. They don’t recall that he babbled to her in their own private language long before they could talk properly, made her laugh when she might otherwise have cried out of frustration or fear, followed her footsteps with absolute faith she would never lead him wrong. The younger they were, the easier it was, but that faith would never quite leave them.

When she’s seven and he’s six, she can already read half the palace library, and he cares more for games than for books. (This will change later. Everything will change later.) 

“Minkowski, you’re being  _ boring. _ Come outside and play, you’ve forgotten what sunlight looks like!”

“Go  _ away _ , Eiffel, I’m reading!”

She snaps at him now, irritated by the younger child who can’t be still or quiet or  _ leave her alone. _ He follows her around and hides her books and her notes, because any of her attention is better than none. Their parents despair at the bickering that has replaced their babyish babble, but sometimes, when the sun is setting, they’ll curl up together and read stories aloud to each other - fairytales if Eiffel picks, histories if it’s Minkowski’s turn - as peaceable as any two children ever are. Some evenings, they fall asleep in the process, curled together in the window, and for all their difference in looks while awake, in sleep, a likeness becomes clear, traceable in the freckles on their cheeks, the strong line of their noses. The subtler marks of family hidden during the daylight hours become crystal clear under starlight. They spend their holidays together quarrelling, but they weep when the time for parting comes, and wish they could stay together.

When he’s ten and she’s eleven, their wish comes true, in the bitter way of wishes. Eiffel bundled into a carriage for the citadel before he even knows his parents are dead, and rails against King Tadeusz and Queen Marie, against Minkowski, for living when they do not.

Minkowski watches him rage, helpless at first, then  _ angry. _ Angry because he always knows the words that will cut to her core: 

_ “ _ You don’t care, you never cared, all you do is read books and they won’t make you a good queen, because they won’t make you  _ feel  _ anything!” 

She can’t help but be angry because when Eiffel hurts, he rages, then he runs, and she can’t understand either instinct, not yet. He runs away at least once a week, to be brought back covered in dirt and rags by the guards again and again, and she almost hates him for it, because running has never been an option for her. But the future queen cannot spend all her time screaming at her cousin like a child, no matter how he might scream at her. So instead she takes up her sword and destroys practice dummy after practice dummy, until her father and the training master will finally agree she’s ready to practice against human opponents and she can  _ do  _ something with this fruitless, useless anger. She practices until her hands ache from the weight of the blade, and her mother binds them for her with a kiss to the forehead.

“He can’t be angry with you forever,” she murmurs, but it doesn’t help because she’s twelve now and  _ months  _ have passed without a kind word between the two of them.

Then summer comes, bringing heat and noise and  _ dust  _ in its tracks, and Eiffel begins to get sick. He was never as strong as her, and at twelve she’s the taller of the two of them, but she never really noticed how  _ small  _ he could be until she was sat by his bed, half-listening to Hilbert spout some medical terminology she can’t understand, with guilt twisting like a knife in her gut because this is  _ her fault. _

They were arguing, and of course they were shouting, and then he started coughing but she didn’t stop yelling,  _ couldn’t  _ stop herself until it was already too late and he’d just… collapsed. Gone still and pale and  _ silent  _ when he should never be any of those things. And now he wouldn’t wake up, and Hilbert just  _ keeps talking  _ like anything he has to say matters when  _ Eiffel won’t wake up. _

She doesn’t move from her seat until just after dusk, when he finally opens his eyes.

“Minkowski,” he croaks, with a grin, “Anyone would think you were  _ worried  _ about me.”

She hugs him tightly, “Shut up, idiot. I’m the eldest, you’re not allowed to die on me.”

He recovers from the first attack quickly enough, but there is a second, and a third, until finally Hilbert recommends that he leave the city during the summer for his health. 

And that is how they come to the castle in the mountains, an old part of his inheritance he’s never seen before, because it is easier to keep the prince and princess together now than deal with the logistical (and emotional) nightmare of separating them. It’s the first time they’re together without  _ any  _ parental supervision, and they run wild, in spite of all that their entourage of tutors and servants and guards do to try and keep them in a routine. But in the mountains, there are trees to climb and woodlands to explore and sometimes even summer snow, and no two children can be contained to a castle when they suddenly have a world beyond the walls to explore.

Minkowski tries her best now not to panic when Eiffel climbs too high or runs too fast, and in return he pretends not to notice the crease between her brows that forms when she’s worrying about him. They still argue, of course, but they make up as quickly as they fall out, and their guardians don’t know whether to be delighted or despairing that they’ve returned to their status as partners-in-crime.

The nights that summer are what they’ll remember most, the cold, crisp air, the clear skies. They sit out on the roof of one of the towers, bundled in blankets and furs, looking at the stars, talking, and telling stories.

“How do you  _ remember _ all this crap?” he teases, “Why does anyone care whether Isabel Lovelace was betrayed at Camlann or not?”

She elbows him with a laugh, their breaths forming clouds in the air. “Because I  _ care  _ about our history, genius. How do you remember all those fairytales?”

“Because they’re actually interesting? Love, loss, despair, hope!” He tries to make a grand sweeping gesture, only to get tangled in the furs, and she covers a laugh as he glares at her. “They’re  _ fun, _ Minkowski. History’s just one tragedy after another.”

“There are good bits of history!” she argues, “Isabel Lovelace had her knights, and they were all happy together. One day they’ll write histories about us, you know. About how  _ annoying  _ you are.” She ruffles his hair.

“Ugh, I hope not. They don’t write history about people who had nice, quiet, sane lives.”  _ And how happy were Lovelace and her knights in the end, Renée? _

“Hey, we’ll have adventures and excitement too! And I’ll protect you!” She gives him a one-armed hug, and he gives a half-hearted struggle

“Ugh, you’re such a worrier,” he complains, but doesn’t shrug her off. They almost fall asleep out there, looking at the stars together, and stumble to bed half-frozen and already dreaming. 

Summer passes in golden sunlight and sharp sudden snowfalls, and autumn comes almost before they notice it. They return to the citadel, Eiffel tanned, Minkowski freckled, both taller and stronger and merrier than they had been in spring. Winter winds sweep through the citadel but do not touch them, and they remain children a little longer, and enjoy another golden summer in the mountains.

The next winter comes with the bite of a wolf, bringing with it a cold that kills. Plague creeps into the city first, then infiltrates the palace. Eiffel and Minkowski are kept to a playroom they’ve outgrown, away from any hint of sickness. They’re bored, shut away from their usual entertainments - riding, dancing, weapons training - but they can still read together. One day they drag all the blankets off their beds and construct a castle-within-a-castle, sitting on pillows and reading Eiffel’s latest romance together. 

“Like any decent king would insist on marrying a girl because of one strand of hair!” Minkowski teases. “He’s lucky Isolde turned out to be a princess, imagine the consequences if she’d been a goatherd.”

Eiffel opens his mouth to defend the romance, more out of habit than principle, when the door opens and a servant enters. They can only see his legs from within the fort, and giggle at his obvious confusion.

“Princess Minkowski? Prince Eiffel?” Minkowski’s smile fades as she sticks her head out of their blanket fort and sees the servant’s expression. “You must come quickly,” he says, dragging her to her feet. “It’s the Queen.”

_They didn’t even tell us she was sick, that was the worst part,_ Eiffel thinks, as they follow the servant through the corridors in bleak silence. He reaches for Minkowski’s hand, and squeezes it tightly before she yanks away. She’s wearing her princess mask, the one she hides behind when she’s scared or nervous or unhappy, and he longs to reach behind it and drag his real cousin out, because he needs her now.

“Children,” Queen Marie sighs, and she’s never looked so  _ fragile  _ before. Her lovely red hair is tangled and disordered now, unlike its usual glossy perfection, and it feels  _ wrong  _ on a level neither of them can describe. “Come sit by me. Not too close,” she cautions, as Renée breaks the servant’s grip on her shoulder and runs to her bedside, “We can’t lose you too, little princess.”

“We won’t lose you either, Mother,” Minkowski insists, “There has to be something we can do, I’ll find an alchemist, or a faerie-”

Her mother gives a soft laugh, “If we had more time, I would love to hear of your first quest, but that isn’t meant to be. Doug, come closer, I want to talk to both of you, and I don’t have much time.”

He obeys, kneeling at his cousin’s side. “I’m here, Aunt Marie.”

“My little ones,” she smiles, “Not so little any more, I see. I wish I didn’t have to leave you so soon.”

“Then don’t go?” Minkowski sounds so  _ young. _ The year between them usually feels like a century, but now… “Please, Mama, I need you!”

“If I could stay for you, my love, I would. But you’re already so strong and clever and brave and kind, I  _ know  _ you’ll make me proud when you’re Queen. They’ll sing of you as they did of Isabel Lovelace, and call you a worthy successor to her throne.” His aunt speaks in the sing-song tone she once used to tell them stories, and at this, he begins to cry.

“We both need you,” he tells her. “Please, stay with us, just a little longer…”

“Douglas,” she sighs, and reaches out with one shaking hand as though to lay it in his hair, as she’s done so many times before, but she draws back, not wanting to infect him. “You’ve grown up so much since you came to us. Your mother and father would be so proud…” She sounds as if she too is about to cry. “You’ll look after my Renée, won’t you? And Renée, you’ve always looked after your cousin. Don’t forget each other.” Her eyes flutter shut. “You should go now, my darlings. I don’t want you to see this.”

Renée  _ breaks. _ “ _ No! _ ” She flings herself towards the bed, towards her  _ mother, _ but she can’t get close enough to get sick, they can’t lose her too-

The servants rush forward to stop her, but it’s Eiffel who wraps his arms around her and gently draws her back. “Come on, Minkowski,” he whispers, “Let’s get some air.” She goes limp in his grip, and he realises she’s shaking.  _ Look after her,  _ his aunt had said, and he doesn’t know how to do that but this is a start. But when they get back to their rooms she pulls out of his grip and races into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She’d always hated crying in front of anyone.

They both look  _ awful  _ in black. Minkowski’s so pale that her freckles and the dark circles under her eyes stand out dramatically, and her hair is scraped back severely from her face, making her look much too old for her years and much too young for her burdens. But her spine is unbending at the funeral, where the king leans on her as much as he leans on Eiffel. Eiffel doesn’t know how the palace isn’t crumbling under the weight of all this grief, doesn’t know how he of all people is still standing when his aunt is lost to them. It’s like losing his parents all over, except he can’t run now, not with the king leaning against him, not with Minkowski standing so straight and so stiff that she looks like she’d shatter under pressure rather than bend. 

She doesn’t run or hide, that’s not Minkowski. Instead, from the moment the funeral ends, she takes duty after duty her mother once held, and soon she governs most of the citadel. King Tadeusz, lost in his grief, barely notices at first, and when he realises what she has done it’s with pride.

“My clever daughter,” he calls her, to anyone who’ll listen, and doesn’t notice what Eiffel notices - that the circles under her eyes are darkening, that the crease between her brows is becoming more permanent, that she doesn’t put off her mourning even after six months, even after the mourning gowns no longer fit her. She retreats to her rooms when she’s not in her lessons or running the citadel, no longer willing to sit with him to talk or read. She can barely bring herself to look at him if she’s not scolding him for skiving off lessons, but she’s always been prickly when hurting. He realises the worst when he sees her beloved histories gathering dust in the library - she’s not reading at all. He gathers them up into a great pile and hauls them up to her new bedroom in the tower with a stolen bottle of wine. He’s out of breath when he reaches the top of the stairs, and praying he won’t have to walk back down them for a while.

“Minkowski!” he yells. No response. “Come on, you can’t ignore me after I climbed about a thousand stairs to talk to you!”

“Go away, Eiffel!” she replies, voice muffled through the heavy wooden door.

“Make me!” he calls back, as he always does, and attempts to shove his way in. “Are you leaning against this? What are you, five?”

“I said  _ go away! _ ” He hears her voice crack, and then a dull scrape and thud as she slides to the floor against the other side. “I don’t want to talk.”

“Fine, be that way.” He copies her, sitting with his back to the door. “I can sit out here all night, if I have to. You know I will.” He can’t tell from here, but he’s pretty sure she’s crying. “Come on, Renée. Let me in. You can’t hide from me forever.”

“Go away,” she repeats, and he can hear even through the wood that her voice is thick with tears. “I just want to be left alone, is that too much to ask?”

“And when have I ever left you alone before?” he teases, trying to cheer her up, but there’s still nothing. More gently: “Did I do something wrong? I never meant to-”

“Ugh, just  _ shut up,  _ Eiffel! Not everything’s about you!” There is a stunned silence, then: “I’m sorry, I just - I need to be alone.”

“Let me in,” he repeats, almost a plea. _ I can’t lose you too. _

There is another silence, then, finally, the door opens a crack, and he steps in before she can change her mind. Her room is a very un-Minkowski mess, and she’s similarly disordered, red-faced and tear-stained. He scoops her into a hug, and she doesn’t resist. Her tears become full sobs, wracking her entire body, and he realises how much taller he is than her now. In his head, she’s always been the taller one, but she’s stopped growing whereas he’s just starting.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she says, between sobs. “I don’t know how to do what Mother did. How am I going to be Queen if I can’t do this?”

He strokes her hair. “You’re Crown Princess Renée Minkowski, heiress to the regency of the Kingdom of Hephaestus in the name of Queen Isabel Lovelace, Lady of the Citadel of the Wolf, and my big cousin. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

“Not this.” She shakes her head and looks up at him, grey eyes red and puffy. “I’m so  _ tired,  _ Doug. All the time. I can’t study and run the citadel and look after Father-”

“You don’t have to,” he promises her, and wonders what he can do to help. “I - I’m not you, but I’ll try harder with Uncle Tad, and I’m sure we can split up the running of the palace between us and Hilbert. You’re only fifteen, you shouldn’t be doing this anyway.”

She gives a teary laugh, “And you’re only fourteen. You’re a kid!”

“We both are,” he tells her, though neither of them feel it’s true any more. “Even you can’t do everything, Minkowski. And even if you could, you still need time to  _ sleep.  _ You still need time to read your stupid histories and swoon over your heroes.” He gestures to the stack of books he left in the doorway. “You haven’t touched them in  _ weeks. _ ”

She sighs, and her gaze drops to the floor. “I guess I just don’t feel like reading any more. Do all those histories really matter anyway?”

He squeezes her shoulders. “That doesn’t sound the Minkowski I know. You could lecture me for an hour on the importance of history when you were  _ six! _ ” 

She pulls out of his grip, turns away, covers her face. “But it  _ hurts _ ,” she whispers, and she’d be crying again if she had tears left in her. “Every time I think of her it hurts. And she told me to look after you and I can’t even do  _ that! _ ”

He puts a hand on her shoulder, afraid she’s going to shrug him off again. He doesn’t know what to do with his unbreakable cousin looking  _ fragile. _ “You know that’s not true, right?” he says, softly. “You’ve looked out for me my whole life. Maybe you just need to let me look out for you for a change.”

“But I’m the eldest,” she says, almost uncomprehendingly. “It’s my  _ job  _ to look after you.”

“And I’m your family, so it’s  _ my  _ job to look after you too.” He draws her over to the window seat, takes the comforter from her bed, wraps it around her shoulders. “So we’re going to sit here, and read your books, and talk about Aunt Marie all night.” He shoves the bottle of wine into her hands, and takes up the book. “Besides,” he adds, as he settles down beside her, “if  _ you  _ stop caring about all these histories, who’ll carry on?”

They talk, and they drink, and they actually manage to read a little, and she falls asleep against his shoulder in the window-seat, as they used to when they were younger.  It’s not the same any more, but they’re together, and as long as they’re together, they can survive anything.

For Minkowski’s sixteenth birthday, her father makes her Commander of the Citadel of the Wolf like her mother before her, and Eiffel has never been prouder of her. True, Hilbert is made Chancellor in the same ceremony, but what does that matter when Minkowski is glowing with pride at her new responsibilities? That year, Minkowski also gains ladies-in-waiting to help prepare the motherless princess for the more social parts of her role as heiress. She’s determined to hate them at first, but they’re kind, if bossy, and she learns to tolerate what they’re trying to teach her. Eiffel becomes particularly grateful for her tolerance when he meets pretty, witty Catalina (“ _ Call me Kate _ ”) Garcia, and begins his first flirtation, which she watches with an indulgent eye.

Her own forays into romance are more… pressured. Her father begins hosting balls for the kingdom’s nobility, and inviting the younger sons and daughters of nearby kingdoms to visit. Minkowski at a ball is awkward at best and acerbic at worst, so it’s with astonishment that Eiffel watches her willingly dance the night away with Prince Dominic Koudelka.

He corners her after the ball to tease her: “So, what’s your handsome prince like? Is the king finally going to get the royal wedding he’s hoping for?”

Minkowski, predictably, blushes as red as her hair. “He’s… nice. Funny too. I like him a lot.” She pauses, then says, more quietly: “It’s just.. I wish he’d shown up a few years later.”

Eiffel frowns, “Why do you say that?”

She looks embarrassed. “He’s great, I like him, maybe I could even learn to love him if we had a little more time, but… I’m only seventeen. I’m not ready to get married, and I’m not going to ask a man I’ve only just met to wait and see if I’ll be ready to marry him in a few years.”

He laughs at that, then sees her stricken expression. “I’m sorry, I know these are serious political concerns, but that was the most Minkowski sentence I’ve ever heard.”

She glares at him. “In what way?”

“You’re the only person whose reaction to meeting someone cute is ‘maybe later’. How are you ever going to have any fun like that?”

She raises her eyebrows, but he can tell she’s amused. “If  _ fun  _ is what you and Kate have been getting up to, I’ll pass. Besides, I have plenty of time to find someone to marry when I’m old enough.”

Minkowski’s ‘old enough’ still hasn’t arrived when Eiffel’s daughter does. While she hadn’t exactly been  _ pleased  _ to find out she was going to become an aunt to the child of one of her ladies, she’s still fond of Kate, and so makes the effort to overcome her fear of babies to get to know her new niece. Eiffel, in spite of being twenty to her twenty-one and being the youngest in the family to boot, is a natural with little Anne, but Minkowski is stiff and awkward with her.

“No, you have to be less tense when you’re holding her,” he tells her, unhelpfully.

“Less tense? I’m sorry, do you  _ want  _ me to drop her?” she retorts, but lets him adjust her arms until she’s holding the baby in a way that feels a little more natural. Anne gets easier to spend time with as she gets older, and Minkowski is secretly thrilled whenever she demands a story from ‘Aunt Renée’.

“Practicing for your own?” Eiffel teases her slyly, and she throws a pillow at his head. “What? You’re going to have to think about it sometime!”

She knows he’s right, but the thought of having a marriage to work on on top of all her other duties is exhausting, so she brushes him off, and tries to enjoy her time with her niece whenever she has a free moment. King Tadeusz, loathing the scandal that comes so close to his heiress, is furious at his nephew for a good year, but as Anne begins to walk and talk, chattering as quickly as Renée ever did, his temper wanes. Eiffel is permitted to accompany his cousin to parties, hunts, and festivals once more, and he cannot deny that the princess relaxes a little around him, she laughs more and freezes less.

That all changes when Anne turns five, old enough to request for her birthday celebration a picnic with both her parents in attendance. While they are no longer lovers, Kate and Eiffel are amicable enough to agree to their daughter’s request, but Eiffel takes it a step too far. Anne wants a family picnic, and the woods are surely safe enough to enter without guards, so he dismisses them. 

He regrets his recklessness the moment the outlaw appears. He remembers the next few moments as flashes of images: Kate’s shout, the bandit falling to her knife, the pony ( _ Anne’s first horse _ ) rearing, and Anne - Anne falls. He dismounts, scoops her up in his arms, but she’s so small, so still, so  _ silent. _ He and Kate race back to the castle as quickly as their horses can carry them, Anne limp and horribly unmoving against his chest. 

She doesn’t wake for a day, and when she does… she can’t hear. Minkowski sends for doctors from the furthest reaches of the Empire, even attempts to seek out a few fae-blessed healers, but it seems nothing can be done for a head injury of this kind. Anne is terrified, and Kate… Kate is  _ furious.  _ She won’t speak to him, will barely  _ look  _ at him. Minkowski takes her part, and he cannot find it in himself to blame either of them, because this is all his fault. His fault for dismissing the guards, his fault for letting Anne ride alone instead of with him or her mother. His fault his daughter will never hear her own voice, her mother’s stories, her aunt’s music ever again. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to look at her without feeling the weight of that guilt, but he isn’t given time to learn. The outlaw, it turns out, was an assassin of some kind, and Kate wants no more of them coming after her daughter. So, with Minkowski’s connivance, Catalina and Anne Garcia vanish as if they’d never existed, and, in the quietest, most distant province of the kingdom, Katherine Minola and her daughter Anna take up residence in a small castle, far from the capital, where nobody’s heard of Prince Eiffel or his daughter.

Minkowski writes to them both as often as she can. Eiffel… doesn’t. Kate and Anne are better, safer, if they never have to read his name again, and the palace is too full of reminders of what he’s lost. The alehouses and taverns in the lower city, however, contain no reminders, and plenty of ways to forget. So he drinks, avoiding his cousin’s rage and his own grief and shame, and the king’s despair in his nephew is finally complete. The court forgets his cleverness, his charm, his social grace, in the face of his drunken quest for his own destruction.

Eventually (he’s lost track of the days since he lost Anne, since Minkowski stopped speaking to him) there is a bar fight, and he ends up in the cells of the City Watch. When he’s sobered up enough to tell them where to send for his bail, he doesn’t actually expect anyone to come for him. He’s wrong. Minkowski storms into the Watch House, gives the guards her most eloquent apologies, and hauls him out of the cell and into a very uncomfortable carriage. She takes her seat opposite him, arms folded, face like stone.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he prompts, after a few moments. “Tell me I’ve been an idiot? Give me one of your endless lectures on proper royal behaviour?” Anything would be more bearable than her  _ silence. _

“What do you want me to say, Eiffel?” Her voice is small and tired.

“Anything. I don’t know. Tell me I’ve ruined my life as well as my daughter’s? That you hate me? That I might as well be de-”

She slaps him. “ _ Don’t you dare say that. _ ” He reels back from the force of the blow, but when he looks at her, he realises her eyes are streaming. “You’re the one who caused all this, you’re the one who’s been punishing yourself, don’t you  _ dare  _ try and get me to encourage you!”

“I’m sorry, Ren-”

She cuts him off. “I don’t  _ want  _ your apologies, Eiffel. I’m not the one who needs them anyway.”

He grabs her hand, “Then tell me what you want, tell me how I can fix this.”

He looks up at her, tired and unshaven and obviously hungover, and for a moment he’s her little cousin again, begging her to help him fix things that might be beyond repair, and she doesn’t know what to do.

“Be better,” she says, finally. “Be my cousin again. Be Anne’s  _ father  _ again. She needs you.  _ I  _ need you.”  _ I can’t lose you too. _ The carriage rolls to a halt, and she yanks her hand out of his and flees, covering her mouth as she always does when she’s trying not to cry.

He doesn’t see her again that day, but in the evening, he climbs her tower, a carefully-balanced tea tray in his hands. 

“Minkowski?” he calls out, unable to knock with the tray in his hands.

She opens the door a crack, already in her nightdress. Her eyes are still red from crying. “What do you want, Eiffel?” Her tone is guarded, her face expressionless. He realises suddenly the tiredness in her face, the rigidness of her back returning him to the days after her mother’s death, when she seemed perpetually on the verge of shattering. Has he done this to her? His invincible big cousin, worn thin by his exploits. 

He can’t answer her still seeing that in her face, so he shuts his eyes. “I fucked up,” he says, eventually, “and I don’t know how to fix it, or if it can even be fixed, but I want to try. Can you help me? Can we start again?” He opens his eyes with a start when the weight of the tray is lifted from his hands. 

She’s opened the door wider now, and has stepped aside. “You’d better come in, then.”

That day is the first in a long line of days where he aches for a drink, but he resists, and keeps resisting. Every time he reaches for a glass, every time the memory of Anne’s fall threatens to overwhelm him, he thinks of Minkowski’s face about to shatter, and he carries on. The first week is difficult, the first month an impossible climb, but she’s there at his side again, helping him write letters to Anne, distracting him when the guilt returns, and comforting him as best she can when it threatens to overwhelm him. She’s not a soft presence, not made for gentle reassurances, but she stands strong at his side, and with her to bear him up, he manages. 

Then the palace roof collapses, and everything changes again. King Tadeusz is dead. Eiffel’s shut away from Minkowski, but he’s also shut away from the wine, and he thanks the gods for small mercies. When he hears of her escape, his captors seem to expect him to feel abandoned, so he plays on that, but truly all he can feel is relief. Minkowski’s free, and as long as there’s breath in her body, she’ll come back for him. She always has before. And when she does, he won’t disappoint her. Eiffel does what he has always done for her: he believes.

Minkowski does what she has always done for him: she worries ( _ on dragonback, in her tent, while she trains, in her sleep _ ). She knows her choice was the right one, that she could never have taken him with her, but she’s still ashamed she didn’t try. She’s relieved her wife doesn’t know her very well yet, because anyone who did would see the panic in her eyes, in the line of her shoulders, in the frantic fury of her weapons practice. She’d hate her hero to see her weakness, especially now they have an army to lead and a kingdom to retake. Especially now she might have to choose between that kingdom and  _ Eiffel. _ Eiffel who she’s promised to protect. Eiffel who she’s protected her entire life. Eiffel who she can’t protect any more. 

When she receives the message from Kepler about the change in the order of executions, she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She loves Isabel, and losing her will break her heart, but without her cousin… without Douglas Eiffel, she doesn’t know how to be Renée Minkowski. She can live without a heart. She wouldn’t know how to live with failing him. And it breaks her, a little, to know that she can live with that choice. 

She doesn’t have to live with it for long. The siege is broken, the palace reclaimed, and her wife - against all odds, against all  _ reason _ \- is returned to her. She’s done it. She’s retaken her kingdom, avenged her father, and saved her cousin. But…

After the war, nothing is the same. Nothing can  _ ever  _ be the same. The war has changed them both. Eiffel watches his cousin command her kingdom, rebuild her city, dance with her wife, and he admires the queen she has grown into, a queen who wears her father’s crown and her mother’s sword as she was always meant to.But he also mourns the princess she was, the princess who never returned from the battlefield. He hears that during the battle for the citadel, she tore through the enemy like an avenging angel, and he’s never been prouder of her, but he can recall none of that bloody grace in the cousin of his childhood. There are parts of her that have never come home, and he wonders if the part of her that needed him was one of them.

She notices the changes too. Eiffel keeps to his rooms now, almost like he’s become his own ghost, and she wonders if that’s her fault for abandoning him, for exiling the sorcerer, for having a crown and a wife and a kingdom while he’s alone. She’d worried about him leaving her when he fell for Kate, when Anne was born, when he started drinking, but she’d never thought she’d leave  _ him  _ behind. He doesn’t smile as quickly any more, though he tries at dinner for her sake, and the romances she has sent to his room remain unread.  _ Do they remind you of him now, _ she wants to ask, but she can’t bring herself to hear the answer. Her tongue sticks in her mouth when she wants to ask about Jacobi, the man who probably killed her father, who  _ certainly  _ saved her cousin, who would kill her if given the chance but spared her for his sake. There is nothing she can say that would uncomplicate that, so she says nothing at all.

Instead, one evening, when the bustle of the coronation is over, she knocks on the door of his rooms with a tea-tray carefully balanced on one arm.

“Can we start again?” she says. The light from the room behind him makes his expression impossible to read, but he steps aside and lets her enter, and as she sets the tray down she can see he’s smiling, nervously. They’ll never be the children they once were, never fit together as they once did, but that doesn’t mean they can’t form something new as they heal. This is a beginning.


End file.
